TechLifeWeb

Often, when you click a link on your Nexus 7 and open the page in Chrome, you get a page that looks like the one pictured here. That is, a page that isn’t quite formatted for your screen. Sure, sometimes changing the orientation of your tablet to landscape will let you view the page better.And yes, you can mess around trying to pinch and zoom around the page until you can read it but that’s a pain.

Here is where the awesome service, Readability, comes to your rescue. With Readability, you simply set up a bookmarklet on your Chrome browser that you can call into service easily on your Nexus 7 and it will reformat you page on the fly into something that you can actually read on the tablet.

First, be sure you have synching for Chrome turned on (and you should, it is very cool). Next, visit Readability’s Bookmarklet Page in Chrome on your Laptop or other computer. Follow the instructions to drag the Read Now bookmarklet up to your bookmark bar (if the bar isn’t visible, make it so first with ctrl+shift+b). Next right+click on your new Read Now bookmarklet and click edit. Then change the name to RN. You can type anything you want but RN is nice and short which will make more sense in a moment.

Note, you don’t have to set up an account with Readability to use this process. It is up to you if you want to do that. I happen to like Readability for other things (you can share right to it from other apps on your tablet) so I have an account and also use their app.

Ok, you are all done with the set up work. Now, on your Nexus 7, browse to a page that has an issue like the one in this example. Then, tap the URL bar to bring up your keyboard and type “r n” (no quotes). This will bring up a list of links as in the example shown here. You will know it is your bookmarklet because it has the word “javascript” at the beginning of the link. Just tap that link and Readability will instantly come along, reformat and present you with a new page that is much easier to read.

If you are still not a fan of how it looks, Readability presents you with a formatting strip running along the left-hand side of the page. Click the font icon and change things around until you like what you see. Usually, however, the defaults work fine.

Happy reading.